Petaluma asks residents to rank top city priorities

Petaluma mailboxes got a special delivery last week in the form of a request for feedback on city services, asking residents to rate the importance of several high-profile areas that could potentially get a boost from an sales tax increase under consideration for the November ballot. Yet the survey sidestepped one conspicuous subject - the possible tax itself.

As the latest step in investigating the viability of a new tax, the recent mailer, signed by four of the city’s top administrators including City Manager John Brown, avoided any mention of the possible ballot measure. A web-based survey, slideshow presentation and additional letter posted to the city website also skirted the subject, focusing instead on an outline of the budgetary challenges Petaluma is facing as a result of the recent recession that is being felt in keys areas such as law enforcement staffing.

The poll’s approach was in contrast to a consultant’s previous phone survey of likely voters that included a tightly nuanced line of questioning around the specifics of a possible tax, shedding some early light on what Petaluma residents might be willing to approve at the ballot box.

Brown said the current survey was intentionally broad, and was meant to both solicit feedback and to educate the public on the city’s budgetary challenges. He put the effort into context with other research and outreach around a possible tax, and said at least one additional phone survey is anticipated before the August deadline for putting a measure on the ballot.

“We are in an education and outreach mode right now,” he said. “This is simply the opportunity to disseminate information, to gather data. That’s opposed to the phone survey sampling, where you had a very scientific approach to that. This is just everybody’s opportunity to weigh in.”

First proposed by a trio of Petaluma City Council members in late 2015 , the tax is envisioned, at a minimum, to generate increased funding for road repair. Petaluma’s roads are consistently ranked as some of the worst in the Bay Area, with available money falling short of funding work that city officials say could both improve pavement quality and potentially make roads affordable to maintain in the long run.

Yet the tax, depending on how it is proposed, could also go toward other purposes, like reversing recession-induced cuts to police staffing, replacing aging fire facilities and shoring up downtown Petaluma’s earthquake-prone Carnegie library-turned museum.

The Petaluma City Council in February authorized spending up to $166,150 on a consultant to conduct polling, research, analysis and public outreach on the possible tax. It would cost $46,000 to put the measure on the ballot, according to an estimate at that time, making for a maximum combined cost of $212,150.

The costs of advancing the measure have prompted several elected officials to call for meticulous polling, which would either inspire confidence in moving forward to the ballot or give cause to call off the process. Many have cited the failure of 2014’s Measure Q as a painful lesson. That proposed tax to fund several city services including road repair appeared to be sailing toward approval before voters shot it down at the ballot box 56.7 to 43.3 percent.

The pivotal issue for Measure Q, many have argued, was that the measure was proposed as a general tax, which allows a wider use of the revenue than a more narrow special tax. General taxes need a lower threshold to pass, yet voters in Sonoma County have appeared reluctant to approve them in recent years, ostensibly over concerns of how the money would ultimately be used.

A proposed general tax for road repair in the unincorporated areas in 2015 known as Measure A also failed by a wider margin, 61.6 38.4 percent.

As the city continues to put out its feelers on a possible tax, one poll responder, Michael Funk, argued that the structure of the most recent survey appeared to be an effort to nudge public opinion toward a wider spending plan.

“When I was done, I couldn’t help but think this survey was skewed toward the thinking of the city administration and their desire for a certain outcome,” said Funk, in an email.

He contended that the inability to rank the importance of high-priority city services, like maintaining rapid 911 response times and attracting and retaining qualified police officers, would prompt respondents to rate each area very highly on a four-point scale, generating results that might seem to indicate a strong public preference for maintaining or growing each service area.

“It is obvious from previous feedback that the number-one priority is to fix our roads. To put out a survey like this is just another waste of our money,” he said.

Respondents were also asked to indicate how important it was to repair potholes, prevent roads from deteriorating, provide safe routes to school for children, maintain essential fire protection including engines and improve road safety for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. The survey also included areas to write in additional thoughts.

Brown acknowledged that the structure of the poll could serve to weigh the results toward positive rankings. Yet he emphasized the open-ended nature was by design, and that the roughly 300 online responses received in the three days since the letters arrived in area mailboxes already exceeded the entire volume of feedback for a previous mail-based survey around Measure Q.

“It’s not intended to ask the question of sales tax in any way. This is just a function of where we can understand what people’s priorities are, and so that people can understand what our needs and challenges are,” he said.

The feedback could also give some guidance on where to cut services if necessary in the future, like in the event of another significant economic downturn, he said.

The cost of sending the most recent mailer was not immediately available, though Brown said it was roughly in the range of $8,000 to $10,000 and within the $60,000 authorized for mailing as part of the consultant contract.

“There’s one more phone polling survey I expect we will complete before this phase of the program is over with, and that will be much more specific in terms of tax structure type, and that’s when we will go to council,” he said.

Having originally proposed the tax in a 2015 Argus-Courier editorial co-authored by councilmembers Kathy Miller and Gabe Kearney, Councilman Mike Healy also described the recent poll as part of a broader process. He noted that the clock is ticking as the city approaches the August deadline to file for the November ballot.

“I think part of the thinking has been to make an informed decision on a general or a special,” he said of the tax. “We only have less than two months to get this thing to the ballot, so we need to move quickly.”

A link to the survey is available at the city of Petaluma’s website at cityofpetaluma.net/cmgr/feedback.html.

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports.)